


Alone

by Viscariafields



Series: FAM2k18 [2]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Angst, Drinking, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 11:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,381
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17043008
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Viscariafields/pseuds/Viscariafields
Summary: After their night together, Hawke and Fenris struggle figuring out how to be there for each other.





	Alone

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally the first half of a one-shot I was writing, but it just got too long. So now it's more of a chapter in the series I've been writing for Fenris Appreciation Month. The happy ending for these two is all but written.

Hawke did not sleep for the rest of the night after Fenris left.

She knew she was to blame for the debacle of their romance, but she couldn’t see where she had gone wrong. If she hadn’t kissed him in the hall… But he had come to her house in the middle of the night. And after she kissed him (why had she chosen to kiss him _then?_ ), he had led her to her bedroom. He had started undressing her the moment the door shut behind them. When he hesitated, she had whispered, “It’s alright. I want this. I want you.” And there was no more hesitation.

How had she not noticed what he was going through?

Hawke buried her face in her hands. She should have asked him more questions. He had said he wanted to try, wanted to spend the night with her. She should have taken it slow, sent him away until heads were clearer. Maker, her head was never clear around him these days.

Him telling her “it was fine” stung, even if he amended the answer later. She had wanted this, wanted _him_ for months, for years. And he said it was _fine_ , and he left.

The sun was rising on Kirkwall now, and Hawke didn’t know how to even start a normal day.

~~

He showed up at her home drunk, late at night. It twisted her stomach into knots to see him, to know at his most vulnerable he showed up here, he came to her. He leaned in to kiss her, and she knew she should refuse him loudly, clearly, but she couldn’t bring herself to. Instead she turned her head, so his lips pressed into her cheek.

She slipped his arm over her shoulder. “Let’s get you home.”

They walked the empty streets of Hightown in silence. Fenris leaned on her heavily, his eyes on the ground. When they reached his home, he finally spoke. “Do you think I will ever… be free of it?”

She gently smoothed the hair out of his eyes. She didn’t need to ask what he meant. “I do. With my whole heart I do.”

He grimaced and turned his head away from her. Even after seeking her out, he still couldn’t bear her affection. She led him inside and put him to bed.

That wasn’t the last time he showed up drunk and raw. She found him once sitting with her mabari. She supposed Bodahn must have let him in, but he didn’t make it past the foyer. He was sitting on the floor, the dog draped across his lap.

“Hawke. There are so many dogs in Kirkwall. Reminds me of you.” He slowly rubbed the wardog’s ears. Porthos closed his eyes in pleasure, and Hawke considered withholding treats from him for a week. “I don’t know why Marchers say dog-lover like it’s an insult.”

“I think they mean the other kind of lover, Fenris.”

Fenris slowly blinked, then nodded, grunting in comprehension.  “I always think… I should show them to you. The dogs of Kirkwall.”

“You should. You should show me every dog.”

He buried his face in Porthos’s fur. “You already have the best one.”

Hawke dislodged her disloyal dog and got Fenris to his feet. “I’d still like for you to show me all the others.”

He sighed. “It would only cause trouble. Other people aren’t like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“You’re so… Fereldan. See a dog get kicked, and suddenly I’m cleaning blood off my feet.”

She shoved the door open and breathed in the cold night air. “Cruelty does not deserve the love of a dog. If someone wants to kick a dog, then they should be relieved of their companion. And their legs.”

Hawke suddenly envisioned her future of an estate packed with every dog in Kirkwall. She could probably comfortably take in fifteen or so. Any more and the smell might be overpowering. She supposed she might take in a cat or two for Anders. The rest could fit in Fenris’s home. He probably wouldn’t even notice them, he had so many spare, moldering rooms.

She realized she had been speaking aloud when Fenris stopped walking to glare at her. “Do you liberate every pitiful creature you find?”

“Would it be so bad if I did?” He snorted. He wanted a fight, to be offered kindness and to reject it, to be given up on so that he could give up on himself. He didn’t even know what he wanted. “I didn’t liberate you, Fenris. Or Merrill, or Anders. I don’t think Isabela could be any _more_ liberated than how I found her. And I don’t pity you.” She lurched forward with him and rolled her eyes as he stumbled. “Well, most of you. I pity your liver a little bit.”

She wanted to hug him, to shake him, to yell at him and force him to confront his demons. But he was right that he was alone in this. She couldn’t force him to feel safe. Or to love her back. So she left him in bed with a pitcher of fresh water and a dragged her broken heart home.

She didn’t close her door to him. She couldn’t. Locking doors wasn’t in her nature. Not when Merrill showed up in the middle of the night with an injured kitten that wasn’t going to make it and begged Hawke to hold vigil with her, or Anders lost control to Justice after her mother expressed faith in the Chantry, or Aveline stormed in and threatened to arrest her _again._ Hawke grew up hiding, and she simply couldn’t close her door. Even if it broke her heart.

One evening he arrived at her estate before dark, sober, carrying a book. Hawke invited him in for supper. He tried to refuse at first, but when it was clear Orana took this as an insult to her cooking, he quickly sat down at the table.

“Why Fenris,” Hawke’s mother remarked, “You have such beautiful table manners.”

Hawke braced herself for the outburst, certain his manners were a result of being paraded around as a well-trained pet, sure his bitterness would require him to remind them of his suffering. But no outburst came. He nodded and smiled.

“Thank you, Leandra. I rarely have cause to use them.”  

Hawke tried to hide her relief. It was the least tense conversation they’d had since Hadriana. At the end of supper, she helped both Fenris and Orana with their reading and writing. Orana bored quickly, choosing instead to pluck a few songs out on her lute. Her music brought Leandra and Sandal to the study. When she retired, so did they.

Hawke and Fenris labored over the table until the candle had burned all the way down. When it went out, Hawke closed her book. “I think that’s it for tonight. It’s bad for your eyes to read in the dark.”

“Elves have better eyes than humans. I can see just fine.”

“Then I suppose you don’t need me to walk you home this time.”

To her surprise, he looked genuinely embarrassed, shoulders hunched and eyes averted. “No, I… I am sorry for… it won’t happen again.”

Hawke had not meant to shame him. “You are always welcome here, regardless of the state you are in. Especially when you are kind to my mother.”

They sat frozen in the dark, each unable to meet the other’s eyes. Hawke was always less comfortable with silence, and finally broke it. “Have I told you about the time I had to carry Varric home? I mean actually carry. I put him on my back.”

“Carry him home from where? He lives at the tavern.”

“I carried him up the stairs to his room. It was hard with Isabela holding onto my legs.”

“Wait, what?”

“That time I think it was something about wanting to test my sea legs? Or was it because she wanted to rifle through his pockets for the money she lost? Either way, she kept yelling ‘pirate law.’ I would try to avoid falling asleep near her if you have money in your pockets.”

“An affliction I rarely have, thankfully.”

“Sleeping or money?”

“Both.”

~~

It became a weekly ritual. When Orana would tire of reading, she would turn to music. Sandal and Leandra always quickly followed. Sometimes Orana taught Sandal to pluck out notes on the lute, and sometimes Leandra sang the songs of her youth. Once she even taught Bodahn one of the popular dances from when she was being courted. Eventually everyone would feign sleepiness, and Fenris and Hawke were left until the candle on the table dwindled to nothing. But even as Hawke looked forward to Fenris’s visits, something painful wrapped itself around her heart. The sudden elation of his arrival was tempered by hollowness when he left. She tried to tell herself that this was all it could be, and so it had to be enough, but…

“It’s torture,” Hawke moaned to Varric, over a pint that might be classified as ‘one too many.’ “He’s torturing me.”

“I knew Tevinter got creative with their torture, but being polite to your mother and making you smile is a new one for me. How does it work?”

“He’s always right there, you know? With his stupid beautiful face. But there’s a wall between us. Can’t touch him. I mean I could but I… can’t. And he’s always just right there.”

“Yeah, Hawke, he _is_ right there.”

“You get it.” She nodded into her tankard.

“No, I mean he’s right _here_.”

Hawke looked up at the beautiful, sad, untouchable elf who had just arrived at her table. She sighed. “Go away, Fenris.”

Glancing at Varric, Fenris shrugged and grabbed the drink he had already set down, leaving to find a different table.

“I really see what you mean, Hawke. What an asshole.”

“You get it.”

~~

It all changed when her mother was killed. Hawke knew all her friends came by, but she couldn’t remember anything about the visits. She knew Fenris had sat with her for hours, possibly on multiple days, but what she really wanted--what she really _needed_ \--was for someone to hold her. She knew Fenris could not be that person. So whatever feelings she had at all, she locked them up and threw them away.

She was the last Hawke. There was no one left to take care of, or be an example to, or behave for. So she didn’t.

If Merrill wanted to create a cursed demon blood magic mirror, who was Hawke to tell her no? If Anders wanted to break into the Circle and reveal himself as an abomination in front of mages and templars alike, Hawke would clean up the mess. Every bar fight Isabela started, Hawke helped her finish. It was, at least, something to do.

The irony wasn’t lost on her the first time Fenris hauled her back to Hightown from the Hanged Man. Or at least, it wasn’t lost on her the morning after. All she had to do to get him to hold her was throw up in some bushes and fall over. Though, he wasn’t holding her so much as holding her _up_. She woke up in her dirty clothes, a pitcher of water and a vial of elfroot next to the bed, her boots neatly placed by the door. It was more than she expected and more than she deserved.

On the fourth occasion, when she woke up, Fenris was still there. He brought a plate of cold food to her room and sat on her bed while she contemplated eating it.

“For a while, I thought that putting poison in my body might help me purge the poison in my soul. Any common rogue can tell you that’s not how poison works.”

Hawke glared at the fried eggs on the plate, like two big, dumb eyes staring at her. Someone had placed the bacon to make a smile. She stabbed one of the yolks with a fork. “So you’re an expert on letting go of pain now?”

“No. But I have some expertise in strategies that do not work.”

He might have been referencing the wine, but she knew he also meant her. Their night together, the sex that had been _fine_ , just another failed strategy to get the poison out. A hangover that just wouldn’t fucking end.

“Get out, Fenris. I never asked you to come here.”

“Friends do not need to ask.”

She continued glaring at the eggs. “You don’t have friends.”

She heard his footsteps hesitate at the door, and then he was gone. She threw the food in the fire and splashed water on her face. She couldn’t bear to be alone in this house anymore.

She spent the next month in the alienage. Fenris never went there, and Merrill didn’t ask questions. Quicker stumble from the Hanged Man, too, though Fenris’s words bounced around her head. Drinking didn’t make her miss her mother less. It just made her body feel as miserable as heart did.

There were moments after she had just woken up when she thought she was back in Ferelden, and the sleeping body next to her was Bethany. But the alienage was louder than Lothering, and Merrill smelled different and talked in her sleep, and Hawke was forced to remember her new reality. She was a rich human woman, and she didn’t belong here.

Perhaps it was time to leave Kirkwall all together. Maybe she’d steal all the dogs on her way out. Fill a ship with them and reestablish herself in Ferelden. Breed mabari or train them or something. Anders would probably come.

Anders emphatically did not want to come. Hawke amended her plan, offering to allow half the ship for the cats of Kirkwall. He did not budge.

“There are circles to fight against in Ferelden. And you wouldn’t have to live in a sewer.”

“The worst abuses are here. I will not abandon the plight of the mages.”

“We wouldn’t be abandoning anything! We’d be… going home.”

“Hawke, you know I grew up in the Fereldan Circle. I have no intention of _going home_.”

And then the Qunari lit Lowtown on fire, and the decision was made for her.

**Author's Note:**

> It occurred to me today, like a year after I posted this, that it could easily be misunderstood that Hawke was sleeping with Merrill as in having sex with her at the end there. I actually just meant it as them sharing a bed, as that was pretty common back in the day and it's not like Merrill has more than one anyway.


End file.
